EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, Mo. — KSHB 41 News reporter Lauren Schwentker covers stories in the Northland, including in Clay and Platte counties. Have a story idea? Send her an email.
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The Excelsior Springs City Council voted to remove Flock cameras from the city earlier this month, and the devices are now covered with trash bags as debate over the surveillance technology grows nationwide.
The decision followed a petition organized by resident Tracie Hardesty, who opposed the cameras after becoming alarmed by their expansion across the country.
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"I saw the infrastructure of mass surveillance nationwide being put into our country," Hardesty said.
Hardesty created the DeFlock petition to oppose the cameras in Excelsior Springs, and the response was swift.
"I just set up the petition and the group, and as soon as I made space, people filled it," Hardesty said.
The signatures made a difference, and the city council voted to remove the cameras Oct. 19.
"If you speak up, someone will listen. There were so many people that told me, 'They aren't going to listen to you, why are you wasting your time on this?' And our city council responded so quickly," Hardesty said.
Not everyone agreed with the move. Excelsior Springs Police Chief Gregory Dull questioned the council's decision.
"I'm disappointed that it's a tool that we've been able to use to help victims of crime, and we're not going to be able to do that anymore," Dull said.
Criminal justice researchers say the cameras are powerful, but the data on whether they reduce crime is unclear. They detailed their findings in an online forum.
License plate readers, or LPRs, can process information faster than an officer working alone, according to one researcher.
"In a given hour, an officer could maybe search 100 plates, whereas an LPR can scan thousands of plates in real time," Kimberly Przeszlowski said.
Przeszlowski is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Quinnipiac University.
Other researchers caution that the evidence is limited.
"The research is a little bit of a mixed bag because the data is incomplete," Johnny Nhan said.
Nhan is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at TCU and a reserve officer at the Fort Worth Police Department. He warns about the technology's potential for misuse.
"Police, as I mentioned, need to have access to information on these databases, this is criminal records to whatever information. Because police officers are trusted individuals, they have past background checks," Nhan said.
"There are layers of security in terms of data access that logs everything. This is a long-standing problem, where police can abuse this stuff," he added.
Researchers also question where the cameras are placed.
"The higher the rate of Black residents in a neighborhood, the more cameras there are, and the higher the poverty rate, the more cameras there are," said Steven Keener, an assistant professor of criminology at Christopher Newport University.
Excelsior Springs is not alone. The advocacy group DeFlock found nearly 300 cities nationwide have decided against the use of Flock cameras.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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